Scenes

Salman Masalha

Scenes

The street paved with illusions
like an unraveled dream,
the sleepers on the bedding of their humiliation
and the awake on a broken sidewalk.
The weepers over their bitter fate
and the seekers of success,
The hiders of their prayer in their hearts
and those who have gone with the wind.
The boat forgotten beside the river
in the morning light -
pictures from the exile that the night
flung in my path and then departed.
O night that has forgotten the dew on my heart,
take me to a land that has garbed itself in death.
My body is a lamentation.


Translated by Vivian Eden

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